


in the name of science

by twistedsky



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-02-19 23:23:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2406668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedsky/pseuds/twistedsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma seduces Grant with experiments that aren't particularly scientific. Backdated for clarity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the name of science

**Author's Note:**

> This was written around December, and therefore certain characters are no longer canon compliant.  
> The lovely Jan requested that it be posted here, and so it is!

Jemma Simmons is a scientist, and as a scientist(especially one who works practically, instead of theoretically) she can often justify doing things she otherwise wouldn’t be able to do, so long as she declares it to be in the name of science.  
  
She had, once, convinced Fitz that they should spend an entire three week period constructing the perfect creampuff, and now she has a recipe for a scientifically delicious creampuff, doesn’t she?  
  
She’s particularly fond of using science to construct food, because so much of cooking and baking is experimentation—looking for the perfect recipe, the perfect amount of time in the oven, the perfect amount of time to wait post-cooking to actually eat it.  
  
Trial and error is what brings you closer and closer to perfection.  
  
Regardless of what her faculty advisor once told her, spending two weeks in the lab force-feeding Fitz different sandwiches was a perfectly valid use of time. After all, hadn’t she determined his absolute favorite sandwich, which is both taste bud-friendly  _and_  guaranteed to put him into an excellent mood?  
  
Food, however, is only the tip of the iceberg.  
  
The justification of  _science_  had gotten her parents to take her to every garden, museum and science center she’d wanted to visit as a child, hadn’t it?  
  
Science is the perfect cover, and has never let her down.  
  
She had, on occasion, when she was feeling particularly flirty, dared attractive boys in bars, in cafeterias, in parks to give her the perfect kiss.  
  
She doesn’t keep a little notebook full of notes and scores, but that’s only because Fitz had pointed out that that would be a serious social breach, and far too calculating. She mentally ranks them though, because what Fitz doesn’t know can’t possibly hurt him.  
  
Fitz’s score, in particular, is a point of contention between them, because he’d insisted that he’d deserved a redo, because he’d been a bit fuzzy-headed and drunk off his ass when he’d kissed her.  
  
She hadn’t complied, because it had seemed far better for the health of their friendship to simply tell him that she’d stop keeping track of the scores.  
  
The point is, indeed, that research and science are excellent mechanisms for getting people to do any number of things, and Jemma is not above using that to her advantage.  
  
When she starts to see the way a certain agent looks at her, all of the time, even when she’s looking(really though, she’s sure the cliché is supposed to be that they look only when you  _aren’t_  looking), and she feels her heart flutter in her chest, she decides to take matters into her own hands.  
  
~~  
  
It isn’t really an experiment, because she doesn’t have enough subjects, and that’s certainly not the point.  
  
She isn’t playing games with his emotions. She simply wants to use the illusion of science to get what she wants. It isn’t as if it would work if it weren’t what he wanted too, she insists.  
  
(Fitz tells her that she’s arguing semantics, but she thinks that if it were put to a jury, she’d probably get off on a technicality.)  
  
“Agent Ward, might I borrow you for a moment?” she asks one day, as casually as she possibly can. She’s even holding a clipboard to take notes on, as she’s very committed to the staging.  
  
He looks up from testing the weight of the newest iteration of the night night gun, which it’s called despite everyone’s attempts to change Fitz’s mind. “Uh, sure.”  
  
Fitz has already been briefed on what he’s to do. She’d had to bribe him into it, but sacrifices must be made in the name of science.  
  
She walks right up to him, keeping about a foot between them, looking up at him and then scribbling something down on her paper. She does it a few more times until Grant is teetering between bemused and confused.  
  
Then, she puts down the clipboard—writing side down, so that he can’t see that sees been writing nonsense—and sizes him up. “Hmm.”  
  
“Hmm?” he raises an eyebrow and she briefly wishes she hadn’t put the clipboard down.  
  
She’s a bit too close to him, she thinks.  
  
But that’s exactly what she wants, she reminds herself, and she is made of much sterner stuff than this.  
  
“You’re very tall,” she says neutrally.  
  
“Compared to you, that is.”  
  
“Compared to many people, I should think.” She frowns at his biceps. “Hmm.”  
  
“Problem?”  
  
“I think you’re going to have to take off your shirt,” she says as if it’s really just too bad. She hopes she sounds disappointed, but not overly put out.  
  
Grant looks to Fitz. “Is she serious?”  
  
Fitz nods. “She never jokes about science.” Fitz has to turn around and face the cabinets under the guide of putting away the night night gun in order to avoid laughing.  
  
Grant looks back to Jemma and narrows his eyes, studying her, looking for clues as to what she’s doing. “Can I know what it is you’re doing?”  
  
“Absolutely not.” Jemma shakes her head. “Shirt off, please.” She says it so expectantly, with the sweetest smile she can muster, that he complies.  
  
She’s been around him when he’s shirtless a handful of times, but he’s almost always been injured or compromised, and that’s not fun at all.  
  
This is far more enjoyable than all of the other times combined, but she puts those thoughts aside to focus on her current task. She’s on a mission, after all.  
  
“Hmm,” she makes the sound from before again. Her goal, in this, is to confuse him.  
  
She’s succeeding rather nicely if she says so herself.  
  
She picks up the clipboard again, stepping back to look up at him and make notations. “Your muscles are very well-defined.”  
  
“Thank you?” he seems unsure whether or not to take that as a compliment. She risks another glance at him. He should definitely take it as a compliment.  
  
“It was just a statement of fact,” she says suddenly, as briskly as possible, her eyes gleaming with mischief. A particularly nasty bruise catches her interest. She narrows her eyes and frowns, looking at some of his more recent bruises, getting distracted from her purpose. “Are you feeling any abnormal pain?”  
  
“I’m fine,” he says. “It’s part of the job.”  
  
She opens her mouth as if to argue with him, and thinks better of it. “You can put your shirt back on.”  
  
Checking up on him to make sure that she won’t be causing him any unnecessary pain—check. The shirtlessness, while particularly nice for her,  _does_  serve a valid purpose.  
  
He does, slowly, and she sighs inwardly. It’s a sad sight to turn away from.  
  
Now comes the slightly more difficult part. She steps closer again, holding the clipboard protectively to her chest. “Lean down, please.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Fitz takes this as his cue to excuse himself and leave, though that wasn’t her intention. She isn’t opposed to an audience on occasion, when it suits her.  
  
“Lean down,” she says again, calmly and firmly.  
  
There’s something nice and warm about him doing what she asks, and trusting her. She feels bad, momentarily, for taking advantage of him this way.  
  
He leans over, and she shakes her head. “No, lean  _toward_  me.”  
  
He seems uncomfortable now, and she comforts herself with the knowledge that if he’d just make a move, they wouldn’t have to do this then, would they?  
  
He can refuse at any moment, and decide that whatever she’s doing makes him uncomfortable, can’t he? She remembers then that she’s a scientist, and this is her  _job_ , and so he probably trusts that whatever she’s doing serves some kind of purpose.  
  
She begins to feel a tad guilty, but this isn’t a real experiment. She’s just—she’s just losing focus, and he’s staring at her awkwardly, closed-off, with that little smile he always seems to have on his face when he isn’t in ‘agent on a mission’ mode.  
  
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” the words tumble out.  
  
“It’s okay. I trust you.”  
  
“I’ll tell you when to stop,” she squeaks out, willing herself not to wince at how  _that_  had sounded.  
  
He leans, as if he’s about to kiss her, until he’s about an inch from her face, and she says stop. She has a cover for this, she thinks, but she can’t remember exactly what she’s supposed to be pretending to be testing.  
  
She wishes she didn’t have to say stop anyway, but she does have boundaries. If he wants to kiss her, he’ll have to do it.  
  
She can only give him a nudge in that direction. She supposes, of course, that she could just kiss him(she’s never had that problem with men before)—but Grant is skittish, and he doesn’t open up easily, and she  _worries_  about him. After everything they’ve been through, the last thing she wants to do is push him too hard too fast.  
  
“Is that causing you any discomfort?” she asks as professionally as she can, and she’s proud to note that her tone doesn’t waver.  
  
He’s silent, for a moment, so she clears her throat. “Do you feel any discomfort in your neck, or your back?” she tries a more specific tack.  
  
“No,” he says tersely. “I’m perfectly comfortable.”  
  
She frowns at him. “You don’t look comfortable. You look rather angry.” She forgets, for a moment, what she’s doing, and why she’s doing it.  
  
“I’m not angry,” he bites off, and oh yes, he definitely sounds angry.  
  
She’d expected a little awkwardness, but not anger. Maybe some blushing, probably mostly from her, but maybe even from him. Tension, she can handle.  
  
“Fine,” she says, almost huffily. He’s still far too close to her, and she could, with ease, kiss him.  
  
She considers it, for a moment, because it would serve him, wouldn’t it?  
  
She can practically hear Fitz in her head, reminding her that normal people don’t kiss people when they’re angry. It’s rude, and something only done in television shows, when characters can’t keep their mouths to themselves.  
  
She frowns at the thought, and since he’s standing so close to her, Ward notices.  
  
“Is something wrong?” He sounds half-concerned, and half-amused, which wholly annoys her.  
  
“Not at all,” she replies. “You may lift your head.”  
  
He does so, smiling at her the entire time.  
  
Sometimes, a smile can be more frustrating than most anything else, she thinks.  
  
She turns and leans back against her work table, so that she doesn’t have to face him. She pretends to look down at her notes.  
  
He leans against it next to her, inches between them, and she pulls the clipboard close to her chest. “I think I’ve got everything I need,” she says softly, a tad disappointed.  
  
“And what would that be?” he asks.  
  
He’s been a terribly good sport about this, so she gives him a bright smile. “Nothing serious, you’ll find out eventually.”  
  
He nods, as if in agreement, but that’s a trick, she realizes with his next words. “I think I should do an experiment of my own.”  
  
“Oh?” she blushes furiously, turning away from him and walking around the lab, as if she’s looking for something. She pulls open a cabinet and places the clipboard inside, shutting it and then frowning.  
  
There goes that easy distraction, she thinks, when he closes the distance between them, leaving a comfortable space, of course.  
  
“Are you game, Simmons?” he challenges, and there are few better ways to get her to do things than to challenge her. The best, of course, is to challenge her  _not_  to do something, but that just goes to show that she always rises to a challenge.  
  
She’s a bit competitive, she admits to herself. She’s  _very_  competitive, if Fitz is to be believed, but that’s why he doesn’t play games with her anymore. She’s sure the final straw was the first(and only) game of Monopoly they’d played, but Monopoly is a disastrous game to play with people under the best of circumstances, so that’s certainly not  _her_ fault.  
  
“Absolutely,” she declares. Jemma can feel the tension in the room—it’s far more potent now. It makes her nervous.  
  
He circles her, giving her a considering glance, and it frazzles her.  
  
She opens her mouth to ask what he’s doing when he says, “Ahh, you said you were game.”  
  
“I did,” she says, “But I—“  
  
“But nothing,” he says, a sneaky smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.  
  
He feels oddly dangerous now, very different from the man who had stood there, going along playfully with her attempts to—what, exactly, she  
thinks now? What had she been trying to do? Get him to kiss her, maybe? Get him(and herself, really) comfortable with being inside of each other’s physical space?  
  
She’s feeling a tad dizzy, and she can’t seem to remember what she’d been working toward.  
  
She imagines, when he stands so close to her that she swears she can feel his body heat pulsing from his body, that this is a bit like what she’d had in mind.  
  
“Lean,” he instructs her, and she frowns.  
  
“Lean? What, over?”  
  
“Up and over,” he says, “Just a tad.”  
  
He leans too, so slowly she doesn’t notice he’s doing it until he’s right in her face.  
  
“This doesn’t seem very scientific to me,” he says, meeting her eyes and teasing her.  
  
“Well, you aren’t a scientist,” Jemma points out. “It wouldn’t be.”  
  
“Ah,” he says, eyes twinkling with humor.  
  
She likes him best like this, all playful and not so heavy-hearted. There’s tension too, right under the surface, but she might be reading into that, because of the tight clenching of her stomach and her own elevated heart rate.  
  
“As a scientist, can you answer a simple question for me?”  
  
“Of course.” She’s practically giddy with excitement, and more than a little light-headed by their proximity.  
  
“What would happen if I kissed you?” he asks, and she feels her heart soar.  
  
“Well,” she says softly, her eyes captivated by his. “The resultant reaction would probably be rather positive, I’d imagine—“ she barely has a chance to finish her sentence before his arms are wrapped around her, and she finds herself flinging her arms around his neck, so it’s easier to hold on when he, yes, oh yes, finally kisses her.  
  
She doesn’t have long to enjoy the whirling in her head, and the sparking in her skin, because Fitz shows up, clearing his throat awkwardly, telling them they have a new dastardly alien object to extract from civilian hands.  
  
But later, when she has a chance, she stands smiling in the lab, pressing her thumb against her lips, reliving the moment.  
  
That, she thinks, was a resounding success.  
  
~~  
  
After their kiss in the lab, she considers her options. She can try to get him to kiss her again(she really prefers this option), or she can pretend it didn’t happen, and cut her losses.  
  
Since she’s still daydreaming about him, and she can’t get the taste of him out of her mouth, and she can’t forget the feel of his hands wrapped around her, she realizes(quite happily) that she doesn’t have a choice.  
  
The research must continue.  
  
~~  
She’s not entirely what her end goal is. She’s not sure she has one, besides seeing through whatever it is she feels for Grant Ward.  
  
She tests out his name in her mouth, and realizes she’d like to call him Grant.  
  
It’s easy enough to try it once, twice, mix it in with Ward, and Agent Ward.  
  
The first time she does it, he gives her an odd look, but he doesn’t comment on it, he just smiles, slightly.  
  
That smile weakens her knees, and it increases the fluttering in her chest tenfold.  
  
Over the course of a few weeks, she becomes as comfortable calling him Grant as she does anything else, and she considers that a success too.  
  
She sneaks another kiss or two from him, with little effort.  
  
It’s easy enough to sidle up next to him, making herself (and, well, Fitz, who would be helpless and hungry without her) food while Grant does the same for himself.  
  
He sets her on fire in the lab one night, after Fitz has already gone to bed, and he teases her softly and slowly on the couch in the rec room when no one else is to be found, and makes her melt in the kitchen, while her soup bubbles and burns furiously over. It’s a mess to clean up, but she doesn’t regret it.  
  
She loses track of the number of kisses at some point, and it makes her deliriously happy.  
  
It never goes any further than heated kisses though, and somehow she’s okay with the slowness of it. He gives her a look that heats her body from head to toe every time she calls him Grant, and she resolves never to call him Ward again.  
  
The first time he calls her Jemma, however, is cause for celebration.  
  
It doesn’t happen when she’s stitching him up or cleaning his wounds after a particularly nasty mission, or when she’s teasing him mercilessly during a friendly game of scrabble.  
  
He doesn’t even murmur it against her skin when he’s kissing her neck, the way she really wishes he would. (When he does, eventually, it’s utter perfection.)  
  
He’s sitting at the table in the little bus kitchen, looking over a mission briefing, and she’s certainly not trying to sneak out the dead rabbit’s foot she  _accidentally_  left in the kitchen freezer the night before, because she’d run out of room in the lab freezer.  
  
“Simmons,” he says, and she freezes, pressing the little jar against her stomach, and turning only her upper body to face him.  
  
“Oh, hello.” Jemma smiles brightly, trying to distract him. “How are you?”  
  
“What are you doing?”  
  
“Nothing,” she says quickly. Maybe too quickly. She winces, fleetingly wishing she had the night night gun on hand, and then she’s instantly relieved that she doesn’t, because that hasn’t ended well the past three times she’s used it.  
  
She’s making a habit of shooting superior officers, and Coulson is developing a special look just for her—part exasperation, part disappointment, and part poorly concealed amusement.  
  
“What’s in your hands?”  
  
Jemma considers the age old trick of turning around, and tucking it into her pants, but it is rather cold, she decides. “A dead rabbit’s foot.” The truth works just fine, she supposes.  
  
“Jemma,” he says, as if it’s just so  _her_. It is, she supposes. The tone says everything, so he doesn’t have to remind her about the ‘no dead animals or science experiments in the kitchen’ rule. The heavy feeling in her chest at the disappointment in his tone, however, is overwhelmed by the realization, seconds later, that he called her  _Jemma_.  
  
She holds the jar in one hand, and walks over to him, kissing him squarely on the mouth. She’s breathless but enthusiastic when she finally pulls away. She almost forgets that she’s holding the dead rabbit’s foot between them.  
  
“Was that an attempt to convince me not to tell the others? Because it was pretty convincing.”  
  
She just smiles at him before standing back up. He’s still sitting down, and while she’d very much like to slide onto his lap, her foot is defrosting, and she needs it for something important. “You called me Jemma,” she says happily.  
  
“That’s your name.”  
  
“I’m aware,” she teases, “But I wasn’t sure you were.”  
  
She reaches out and squeezes one of his hands with her empty one, and then heads back to the lab, happy as can be.  
  
~~  
  
The seduction of Grant Ward is far easier than she possibly could have hoped it would be.  
  
While she has every intention of trying to win him over, most days it feels like he already has been, and it’s not really work at all.  
  
It’s more like two people who sort of just slide together, as if they’ve been waiting all of their lives for this.  
  
Jemma generally doesn’t consider herself much of a romantic, but there’s a softness in her heart, and there always has been. It’s like he found himself some fertile soil and planted himself a flower in the garden that is her heart.  
  
She frowns when she contemplates that particular metaphor, because it isn’t a great one, but it’s the best she has.  
  
It also feels like she’s sliding, floating even, into love, more so than falling.  
  
It’s a soft fall, and while she’s terrified of hitting the ground, there’s comfort in knowing that he’ll catch her.  
  
~~  
  
Things get slightly more complicated eventually, as they were always wont to do, she acknowledges. She should have known better.  
  
It’s easy to fall in love softly, but it almost certainly guarantees an all too surprising thud when you finally hit the bottom, whether someone’s there to catch you or not.  
  
They’re still in the sweet rush of new, well, whatever it is, she supposes, when she comes tumbling down from the clouds to the ground below.  
  
He disappears one day, without telling her why—not that he has to, because there are often missions above her clearance level, and that doesn’t bother her. She tries not to let it, anyway.  
  
This is different, however, because it doesn’t feel like a mission. It feels personal.  
  
He’s gone for a week in all, and he hasn’t left anything significant behind (except her, she laughs), and a part of her fears he isn’t coming back. It’s mostly irrational, because Coulson would  _tell_  them if that were the case, wouldn’t he?  
  
She can’t explain the fearful feeling, but it takes up root in her, and she can’t seem to stop considering all of the worst options.  
  
When he returns, he’s . . . different.  
  
It isn’t a huge difference; it’s simply as if his coldness, his hardness that he’s been carefully melting over the past several months with the team, has returned worse than ever.  
  
He’s done this before, but not to this extent—he’d curled back into himself after the incident with the Asgardian staff, and he always gets quiet after a particularly taxing mission, but she’s not used to him being this closed off.  
  
The worst part comes when he avoids her, purposefully. He calls her Simmons, and doesn’t smile at her(or anyone) for days, and when she tries to get him alone to talk, he finds any excuse to leave the second she strengthens her resolve, as if he reads it on her face, and wants no part of it.  
  
It isn’t as if they were doing anything serious, she reminds herself. Secret kisses and comfortable conversations do not a relationship make, after all.  
  
But Jemma Simmons does  _not_  mope, and she certainly will not pine after him. If this is the way he’s chosen to tell her he’s not interested, then so be it.  
  
It’s easy enough to throw herself into her work even more, and become ruthless in her control over her facial expressions whenever she’s around him. She gives him nothing.  
  
She protects herself, and steadies her heart, but she doesn’t feel successful at all now.  
  
~~  
  
“Have you noticed anything weird about Ward lately?” Skye asks conversationally, sitting on one of the counters in the lab eating ice cream and swinging her legs back and forth.  
  
Jemma barely hears her question because she’s too busy imagining all of the things that can go wrong with that. She’s imagining ice cream over  _everything_  and it’s awful.  “Hmm?”  
  
“Ward, weirdness,” Skye repeats. “You guys seemed chummy, and I just wondered if you knew what was wrong with him.”  
  
“Not at all,” Jemma replies, nudging Skye slightly so that she’ll get off of the workspace.  
  
Jemma is thankful to note that Skye had at least cleared a space first, which required forethought, Jemma realizes, which—Jemma frowns. Maybe she’s not thankful.  
  
“Oh,” Skye says, crestfallen. She’d clearly been expecting a different answer. “Did you guys have a falling out?”  
  
“Not that I know of,” Jemma replies crisply.  
  
“Huh,” Skye gives Jemma a considering look. “He’s been on my ass ever since he got back from that mini vacation he took. If I could go on vacation, I’d probably go to like, Hawaii or something, and I’d come back in a fantastic mood.” Skye sighs. “But that’s not likely to happen anytime soon.”  
  
“Just focus on your work, Skye,” Jemma says kindly. “Everything will work out just fine. It just takes time to jump through all of SHIELD’s hoops.”  
  
Skye nods. “Yeah, I know. It just sucks. And my superior asshole isn’t making it any easier.”  
  
“Then why don’t you ask him what’s wrong?”  
  
Skye gives her a weird look. “Are you for real? He likes you way better than he likes me. Which is why I’m here.” She takes another bite of ice cream, this time sitting on a stool, which Jemma notes approvingly before considering the other woman’s words.  
  
Jemma shakes her head. “I don’t think that’s true. He hasn’t spoken more than a few words to me in days.”  
  
Skye narrows her eyes at Jemma. “Are you sure nothing happened between the two of you?”  
  
“Positive.”  
  
“Okay, I guess.” Skye frowns down at her empty bowl. “I need more ice cream.”  
  
Jemma nearly sags with relief when Skye moves to leave the lab, but then stiffens again when Skye turns back to her.  
  
“You know, I like you, Jemma. You’ve always been nice to me, and you didn’t hold the whole sleeping with the enemy thing against me too much, and you make killer lasagna, which is like my guilty pleasure after ice cream.”  
  
Jemma instantly feels guilty for wishing she’d leave the lab so quickly, and softens immediately. “Oh, Skye.”  
  
Jemma closes the distance between them, hugging the other woman. She’s rather fond of Skye, truly.  
  
Skye seems surprised at first, but then she relaxes into the hug. “Thanks, I needed that,” she says, pulling away. She looks down and makes sure she didn’t spill any of the melted ice cream on either of them, which she thankfully hadn’t, she notes with a smile.  
  
“Me too,” Jemma says, a tad surprised that it’s true. “Thank you.”  
  
Skye smiles at her, and Jemma is reminded of why she finds Skye so interesting. Bad girl shenanigans notwithstanding, Skye is a good person, and a lovely friend. “You know, if there were to be something, hypothetically, wrong between you and Grant, you could just talk to him,” Skye points out.  
  
Jemma hesitates for a moment. “He’s avoiding me.”  
  
“Why?” Skye looks confused. “He’s still stuck on looking at you whenever you’re in the room. I swear I can always tell where you are by looking wherever he’s looking.”  
  
That warms her heart, though Jemma wouldn’t dare admit it, not now. “Nothing happened that should have caused that. He’s been different ever since he got back.”  
  
Skye frowns. “Maybe we should snoop.”  
  
“Skye,” Jemma starts to think of all the reasons why they shouldn’t, and then thinks about how upset and closed off Grant has been likely. “That’s an excellent idea.”  
  
~~  
  
Jemma and Skye make fantastic partners in crime, if they do say so themselves.  
  
The problem is that there’s no opportunity for them to snoop.  
  
They try to get May or Coulson to say something, but while May is as unreadable as always, Coulson simply tells them it’s none of their business.  
  
“Maybe we ought to go to the source,” Skye suggests. They’re watching a movie, and eating popcorn out of a large bowl between them, and trying to come up with an alternate plan of attack.  
  
“I do believe we’ve already established that that won’t work, because he’s avoiding me, and he just scowls at you when you try to have an actual discussion with him.”  
  
Skye nods, “True, but I have an idea.”  
  
“Do tell.”  
  
Skye hesitates. “I don’t think I should tell you.”  
  
Jemma’s eyes widen. “I don’t want to know, do I?”  
  
“No,” Skye admits. “You probably don’t. But I have one question before I enact my master plan.”  
  
This unnerves Jemma, who is already unsure of this plan. “Okay,” she says carefully.  
  
“Is anything going on between you and Fitz?”  
  
Jemma scrunches her face up in confusion. “Um.”  
  
“Romantically, I mean,” Skye clarifies. She looks very interested in the answer, and Jemma eats some popcorn to have a moment to compose an answer.  
  
“Fitz,” she says finally, “is my closest friend in the world. He is, for lack of a better term, my better half. But only in the most platonic sense. But the fact that you needed to ask me that question in particular  _worries_  me, Skye.”  
  
Skye reaches out and pats Jemma’s arm, smiling secretively. “It shouldn’t.”  
  
“Oh, but it does.” If, for instance, Skye decides to enlist Fitz for this plan, then it will probably turn out horribly. As much as Jemma loves him—and she really, really does—subtlety is not his strong point. It isn’t hers, either, but that’s hardly the point.  
  
“You’ll thank me when we’re done,” Skye declares.  
  
“Maybe you should tell me what your plan is, just to make sure that it’s—“  
  
“Oh no, you had your chance, Simmons. You’ll just have to wait and see. I’m really good at this.”  
  
“Good at what?” She’s really beginning to worry now, and it’s making her stomach clench, which is a terribly unpleasant feeling.  
  
“Don’t worry,” Skye says, which means that’s all that Jemma will be able to do, of course.  
  
~~  
  
Grant shows up in the lab the very next day, and Fitz scampers off—which isn’t particularly suspicious to Jemma at the time, though later it makes her groan. Generally, when Grant shows up at this time of day, that means that Skye is done training with Grant, which means that Fitz can coincidentally show up in the kitchen at the same time she does(because she’s a creature of habit, and exercise makes her peckish).  
  
Since Grant hasn’t shown up in the lab for no reason in quite a while, it  _should_  set off alarm bells for her. She’s rather pleased to see him though, so it distracts her from overly delving into the situation until he talks to her. “Where’s Coulson?” Grant asks. “Skye said he was supposed to—“  
  
The lab doors shut at that moment, and while Grant doesn’t take notice, Jemma does.  
  
She frowns, walking over to them and pushing the button that should open them back up.  And, unsurprisingly, Jemma realizes, it doesn’t.  
  
“Fantastic.” She sighs.  
  
“What?” Grant asks, slightly less clueless now that he’s realized something is wrong. “Is it broken?”  
  
Jemma throws her arms up. “I doubt it.” She turns back to face Grant, who has a solemn look on his face. “I should have known better than to let Skye make the plan. And I definitely should have made her tell me what it was.”  
  
“What plan?” He seems suspicious of her now too, which is really just wonderful, because nothing opens a person up like being suspicious of your motives.  
  
“Nothing for you to worry your pretty little head about,” Jemma says confidently. “So, Coulson probably isn’t going to show up.” She’s decided that if she has the opportunity, she may as well take advantage of it to make Grant talk.  
  
“You think I’m pretty?” he says teasingly, and it’s the Grant she’s been missing, and she nearly weeps with joy, but then he ruins it all by closing right back up, the smile disappearing so quickly she’s not sure she saw it at all. “What’s this about?”  
  
Jemma plops herself down on a stool, facing him. “You may as well sit down,” she motions to another sitting right in front of her own. “You know,” she says conversationally, as if she’s just thought of it, “You’ve been a bit different as of late. Distant.”  
  
Grant stares at the stool almost menacingly before sighing and sitting down. “No.”  
  
“No?” she repeats incredulously. “ _No_?”  
  
“No,” he says again firmly.  
  
“Oh, I see. So I was just imagining things.”  
  
She notices the almost imperceptible (and quickly covered up), wince that crosses his face. She can work with guilt, she decides. “I don’t think I was imagining things, Grant,” she says softly.  
  
He says nothing, so she continues. “You and I—we may not have been doing anything serious, but we were doing something, and then you left, and came back, and now you seem so . . . cold.”  
  
“I didn’t mean—“ Grant starts, and then stops. “I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”  
  
“But you did,” she says. “You’re taking it out on all of us, and we didn’t  _do_  anything, unless I’m missing something?” Her hands are waving wildly in the air, because she feels the need to express how incredibly helpless and angry and sad that makes her feel, but she doesn’t quite have the words for it.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says, as if that’s meant to be the end of that.  
  
“I’m your friend, Grant. Before anything else, I am your friend, and I am here for you.”  
  
He’s so still, and so stiff, that if he weren’t blinking, she almost might think he’s been immobilized.  
  
“Please,” she implores. “Trust me—and if not me, then someone else on the team, or a random stranger on the internet, if that helps.” She rather thinks he won’t do that, but he needs to do  _something._  
  
Grant watches her, considering her words. With great emotional strain, he closes his eyes, breathing deeply to steady himself, and then reopens his eyes.  
  
“I left to handle my brother’s funeral,” he says finally.  
  
“Oh,” Jemma feels small now. She’s a terrible person, and a terrible friend, and he shouldn’t forgive her for this certainly. He should have  _told_  them, that’s what friends are there for—she’s caught between guilt and anger, and neither manifest. Instead, she slides off the stool, closes the small distance between them, and hugs him.  
  
She doesn’t let go when he doesn’t move to hug her back, she just lets his head rest on her shoulder, and holds him tightly, burying her own head in his neck.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I didn’t mean—I just wanted to help.”  
  
“I know,” he says. “I didn’t want you to.”  
  
She clutches at that, but she doesn’t let go of him. “Next time I’ll—“  
  
“No,” he interrupts her. “It’s okay.”  
  
She stands there awkwardly, but refuses to let go. He wraps his arms around her, and holds her back, and so she closes her eyes, breathing him in.  
  
“My older brother--he was cruel." Grant hisses as if in physical pain. He shakes his head. "He made me do things that I'll never forgive myself for. He did things to me too, but that's nothing--" Grant winces. "It's nothing compared to what I've done."  
  
She doesn’t know much about Grant’s family, but she knows that he and his older brother had a nasty relationship. She strokes small circles on his back with one hand, and holds him tightly with the other.  
  
“My older brother—I  _hated_  him, and now he’s dead,” his voice breaks slightly, and Jemma would hold him forever if it meant he never had to feel the kind of pain in his voice again. “I don’t know what to do.”  
  
Jemma wishes she knew what to say. If Skye were here, she thinks, she would know. She would say all of the right things. Jemma, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same words, and she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do.  
  
“I wish,” she says fervently, “That I knew what to say, or what to do, but I don’t. I just—you are a good person, Grant. You are so kind, even though you hide it sometimes. And you’re funny, which I don’t think most people know, because you have this image in your head of who you’re supposed to be, and it doesn’t always jive with who you are.” She’s rambling, missing the point, she knew she’d do this.  
  
She takes a deep breath. “You don’t have to be anyone except who you are, because that person is exceptional, and I respect and care for that person more than I could possibly say with mere words. Your brother was not a nice man, but he was your _brother_ , and if you want to hate him, or mourn him, you can do whatever you need to,” she says intensely. “And feel whatever you need to feel, because you are allowed that. You will make it through this,” she tells him as if she  _knows_  it to be true. She  _feels_  it.  
  
“Jemma,” he says. He doesn’t need to say anything else, because as always, the way he says it tells her everything she needs to know.  
  
“If you need to be hard and withdraw from the rest of us,” she says softly. “You can do that. But I just need you to know that we are all here for you, to protect and comfort you the same way that you would do for us.”  
  
“I know,” he says softly. “I’m sorry I closed up on you.”  
  
She’s not sure whether to tease him, and tell him just not to do it again, because maybe she’s supposed to tell him that she understands, that he has to do what he needs to do to get through this. He does, of course, but neither thing feels right to say. “I’m here,” she says instead.  
  
She can feel wetness in her hair, as if he’s cried into it, and she’s afraid. She’s afraid because she didn’t really realize until this moment that she cared this deeply for him—that she wants him to be able to cry in her hair(and she wants him to never cry, because she wants to try to protect him from the hurt of the world, even though she knows she’ll never be able to do that).  
  
That is a thought that needs to wait for another time, however, because Grant  _needs_  her to be strong now, to be sure and true.  
  
Eventually he pulls away from her slightly, and she lets him. Instead of doing so completely, he kisses her forehead, and then leans his head against hers.  
  
Her arms stay loosely around his neck, and she just stands there, holding him still.  
  
The heart, Jemma knows, is what keeps the body going. It pumps blood through your veins, and allows you to do what you need to do, but it isn’t where your emotions come from.  
  
Your mind is where everything you are comes from—it’s your memories, your personality, and the closest approximation to what a soul is.  
  
Jemma feels closer to him in that moment than she’s ever felt to another human being—almost as if his soul is touching hers, as if the core essences of who they are meet through the skin of their foreheads.  
  
It’s a bit fantastical, and she wouldn’t admit to the thought of it on pain of death, but she  _feels_  it in that moment.  
  
~~  
  
In the weeks that follow, they reorient themselves around each other.  
  
It’s slow and steady work, with plenty of setbacks. There are days when Grant is gruff and as non-communicative as ever, and days when he smiles, when he kisses her soft or hard or both in turn.  
  
There are days when he shows up at her little room, and she curls into him, his arms protectively around her—and there are days when she holds his head in her lap, and lets her hands dance through his hair softly, murmuring stories and all sorts of inanities.  
  
It doesn’t seem to bother him, so she just hopes it helps a little at least.  
  
She wonders, sometimes, if this is what she’d expected that day in the lab, when she’d practically taunted him into kissing her.  
  
She’d made that choice, and he’d followed through, so it hardly matters, she thinks. They made a choice together, just as they make one every time he tells her a story about his past, or she kisses him with emotions she hasn’t quite unraveled yet—it’s something like love, she thinks, but she can’t put the word to it, not yet.  
  
~~  
  
They don’t generally fight; they tease. They use sharp words that become serious conversations, or devolve into kisses to ease the tension.  
  
They have serious discussions in calm, rational tones.  
  
When they have sex, eventually, it’s so agonizingly slow that it’s somehow perfect, like they’ve gotten completely lost in the moment, like the moment is actually outside of time.  
  
Yes, she knocks her head against his, but then she laughs into his mouth, as he kisses away the thought of the slight pain. He falls off the bed when they try to get naked, and she falls down on top of him, biting her tongue and drawing blood to stop from laughing hysterically and alerting the others to what they’re doing.  
  
It’s still perfect though—at least Jemma thinks so, in her post-orgasmic haze, and they do it again, and again, so she supposes there’s that.  
  
(She might be, she thinks, too in love to know the difference.)  
  
~~  
  
She’s floating along quite happily—they’ve filed the necessary paperwork with SHIELD, the missions are going much more smoothly, if not more easily, and everything is perfect.  
  
She should know better than to think that, because that’s always when things change for the worst.  
  
~~  
  
“If you die on me, I will find a way to bring you back to life, and I will kill you again,  _painfully_ ,” she promises, her hands in Grant’s chest, searching for the bullet.  
  
He’s unconscious, and he can’t hear her, but she doesn’t  _care._  
  
He knows, she thinks.  
  
She doesn’t have much more time for irrelevant thoughts because she’s focused on removing the bullet that had the audacity to hit a major artery and she’d glare at it meanly if she weren’t struggling to make sure that the love of her life—because oh yes, he is, she realizes now—doesn’t die.  
  
Skye is driving the van, and Jemma is in the back, trying to keep herself together while Fitz keeps muttering that everything’s going to be okay.  
She appreciates that, truly, and it helps provide her with the state of mind to at least  _focus_  on what’s in front of her.  
  
They make it to the hospital, and she wants to be in there with him, but she’s not a surgeon, she’s just a scientist, and there’s nothing more she can do for him.  
  
She stares blankly down at her bloodied hands and gloves and her favorite blouse. She dispassionately notes that she’s going to have to throw it out, even if it could be salvaged, because she never wants to see it again. She might have to burn it.  
  
Hours later, when he’s still alive, but still critical, and she can’t  _see_  him, she curls up and stares mindlessly at the wall, ignoring the chattering around her, and the attempts of her teammates to talk to her.  
  
She really doesn’t want to hear it.  
  
She’d kept her head at first, hadn’t she? She’d saved his life, the doctors tell her. She’d given him a fighting chance, at least.  
  
But now, she’s lost, because she loves him, and while she knows he knows it, she needs to  _tell_ him.  
  
She needs to tell him when he’s perfectly healthy and well, and never going to almost die on her again—at least not until they’re old and grey, and she’s pretty sure that she’s going to fit something into her vows about him not dying before her, and him not doing it anytime soon, because yes, she’s going to  _marry_  this man(she’s decided this now, and she hopes he goes along with it, because he doesn’t have a choice in the matter, not now after she’s practically held his heart in her hands, and he’s made her  _love_ him).  
  
When she sees him, finally, she cries.  
  
She hadn’t cried before, when she’d been trying to save him, or when she’d been waiting unsure if he’d make it.  
  
He’s pale, and her heart is breaking all over again, and he has to wake up, right?  
  
When he opens his eyes to see her, and he smiles slightly, she realizes she doesn’t need to tell him that she loves him at all, because he already knows it. She reaches out for his hand and kisses his forehead.  
  
“I didn’t die,” he says softly.  
  
“I know,” she says gratefully. “And you ought to be happy about that, because I had every intention of unleashing any number of horrors upon the world to bring you back. I could have created the world’s first zombies,” she chokes out.  
  
“I love you,” he says.  
  
“I love you,” she echoes, eyes shining with tears again.  
  
~~  
  
Jemma loves her job, and she even likes the field, when it isn’t completely terrifying.  
  
She likes the adventure, and she likes being part of something that truly matters.  
  
But it can’t last forever, and she knows that(is grateful for it), because there are other adventures ahead.  
  
~~  
  
It takes them a few years to get around to the proposal stage of their relationship.  
  
They discuss, a few times, the possibility of marriage, but it’s always in a far off ‘one day’ sort of way, because they aren’t quite there yet.  
Skye becomes a full agent, they all watch as their clearance levels increase gradually, and while they’re a fantastic team, it begins to feel like they’ll break apart soon enough.  
  
It isn’t that they don’t care for each other, but they start to itch for  _more_.  
  
~~  
  
There’s an unspoken fear that they’ll each leave one by one, but in the end it happens all at once—Fury has a plan, he says, and they all have a part in that.  
  
They all end up in New York—Fitz and Jemma end up back in the lab, even sharing space with Bruce Banner and Jane Foster, which excites them to no end, Coulson decides that it’s finally time for Skye to focus in on the welcome program for the gifted, and May(while based in New York too) gets back to her roots in the field.  
  
But before this, when they’re still on the bus, preparing for this outcome, Jemma asks Grant to move in with her(and he responds by pulling his grandmother’s diamond ring out of his pocket and asking her to marry him).  
  
“I—“ he starts to say, because he has a whole speech planned, and she’s completely moved up the timetable in a terribly unromantic way(but that’s why he loves her), but then she interrupts him, kissing him soundly.  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“You could have at least let me ask,” he points out, but then she kisses him again, and he slides the ring onto her finger, and he decides that it doesn’t really matter, so long as he spends the rest of his life with her.  
  
~~  
  
They have sex in every room on the bus, in every single position—“for science!” Jemma declares, smiling broadly when they get caught on Coulson’s desk on the last day, after most things have been cleared out anyway, and he just stands there and asks why(she’s pretty sure he’s not even talking to them, not really, but she answers anyway).  
  
Jemma tells Grant later that while she’s not sure which room was her favorite, she does have to declare engagement sex far superior to just dating sex.  
  
Grant has to agree, if you ask him.  
~~  
  
Their wedding planning is a disaster, because Jemma would much rather be in the lab, or be in her husband-to-be’s arms than actually plan it, and Grant just wants to be married to her.  
  
And so, on the actual day, it’s a small ceremony—sweet and romantic, and just friends and family.  
  
Grant’s younger brother shows up with  _his_  wife and their three sons, asking them when they’ll start having children.  
  
“From the looks of things,” the younger Ward says to his wife as they watch them disappear off several times during the quasi-reception party afterwards, “It won’t be long.”  
  
Coulson’s friends(that’s what they call themselves, even though each of them threatened to kill him when they’d discovered he was alive) the Avengers show up too, which means that that party is actually  _huge_.  
  
Grant and Jemma don’t mind, because they’re stuck in newly-wedded bliss.  
  
When someone asks them how they first ended up together, Jemma turns to Grant and smiles. “It depends on who you ask.”  
  
“I dared her,” Grant says, his eyes completely on his new wife.  
  
“I tricked him into that though, even though he’ll never admit it.”  
  
“How?”  
  
“With science,” Jemma answers, smiling so ridiculously wide that her mouth would ache if she weren’t so deliriously happy.  
  
“She says that,” Grant mock whispers, leaning forward to tickle his new wife, “But I think it started before that.”  
  
“Oh?” Jemma asks when he finally stops tickling her. She’s blushing red and she’s slipped off her own chair onto his lap by now. “When was that?”  
  
“Guess.”  
  
“When you caught me, I suppose,” she says seriously. “I love you.”  
  
“I love you too,” he says, “but that’s not quite what I—“  
  
He doesn’t have a chance to finish that thought, because his new wife is nibbling on his ear, and it doesn’t matter how it started anyway, so long as they got exactly where they are today—her in his arms, and his heart in her hands.


End file.
